Out-of-place: the lack of engagement with parent networks of caregiving fathers of young children

A new article, co-authored with Paul Hodkinson, published recently in Families, Relationship and Societies, discusses one of the key themes from our research with UK fathers who had taken on primary or equal caring responsibilities for their young children.

The article outlines how, for most such fathers in our sample, contact with other parents during their day-to-day care was minimal. Many initially rationalised their isolation as a personal preference rooted in their own ‘introverted’ nature, but such individualised narratives underplayed how various systemic factors worked against their integration into parent networks. While these may include, we suggest, less intense pressures than mothers to engage with such groups in the first place, our primary findings concern barriers they faced, including: feeling ‘out-of-place’ in many daytime public spaces; a specific fear of being judged because of their gender; and the difficulty of meeting other fathers with responsibility for day-to-day care. The operation of these factors, we argue, provides evidence of the enduring nature of gender differences with respect to early years parenting and in particular, of the gendering of daytime public parenting spaces – something that may represent a barrier to the extent and longevity of fathers’ caregiving roles.

The full article can be accessed here.

Interchangeable parents?

An article I have co-authored with Paul Hodkinson, has just been published in Current Sociology. It draws on research that Paul and I conducted with fathers who had taken on primary or equal caring responsibilities for young children. We argue that the men’s comfort in presenting themselves and their partners as interchangeable equivalents suggests that they had begun to move beyond clearly differentiated motherly or fatherly roles. The article goes on, however, to show that certain emotional, organisational and social aspects of parenting sometimes continued to be centred on mothers. In explaining the endurance of these areas of maternal responsibility within otherwise interchangeable partnerships, we outline mutually reinforcing sets of maternal pressures and paternal barriers. The full article is available here.

Fathers sought for new research project

fathersAre you a father in a heterosexual dual-parent household in the UK who is the primary carer or who shares care equally with your partner for a child aged three or under?

We are carrying out research at the University of Surrey on the experiences of fathers who take on primary or equal caring responsibility for young children.

We are particularly interested in those whose caring responsibilities connect to changes to work (whether voluntary or enforced), such as periods of extended parental leave, adjusted hours, working flexibly or part-time, changing job or becoming unemployed. However, we also hope to speak to those taking on primary or equal care responsibilities alongside existing full-time work.

If you think you, your partner, or someone you know might come into this category and would be willing to take part in an interview with us, please contact us at p.hodkinson@surrey.ac.uk to find out more. The identity of participants will be kept confidential.

Rachel Brooks and Paul Hodkinson, Department of Sociology, University of Surrey